Discovering the little-known architectural treasures of Seine-Saint-Denis

“Never seen that in France. Jacques Moulin, chief architect of Historic Monuments, is categorical. The ignorance surrounding the historic monuments – or likely to be – of Seine-Saint-Denis is reaching new heights.

In charge of the Saint-Denis basilica since 2010, Jacques Moulin says he discovered in the 93 “extraordinary monuments, but totally ignored”. If we no longer present the basilica, who has already visited Notre-Dame des Vertus in Aubervilliers or the church of Raincy, made of raw concrete in the 1920s? Who knows that the town hall of the small town of Gournay is nestled in a remarkable castle, or that it was in Saint-Denis that the first concrete house in the world was built in 1853, the Coignet house, listed as a Historic Monument in 1998 ?

It is to shed light on this heritage that the book “Architectures en Seine-Saint-Denis” (edited by the French Archaeological Society) has just been published, edited by Jacques Moulin. The book presents 21 monuments from the 93, whose construction sometimes began in the Middle Ages. Some of them, underlines the architect, “had not been the subject of any monograph”: “In Picardy, in Auvergne, each church has had its thesis on the history of art, its scholar. But the suburbs are a tire of ignorance around Paris… ”

French architecture was largely done in Seine-Saint-Denis

And in the eyes of the architect, the fault lies with the “condescending snobbery of Paris towards the suburbs”, conceived, in particular in the XIXe century, like the receptacle of the poverty pushed back by the capital according to its urban development.

However, writes Jacques Moulin in the introduction to the book, “French architecture was nevertheless largely made in Seine-Saint-Denis”: from the beginning of the construction of the Saint-Denis basilica, in the Middle Ages, until to that of the sports complex of L’Ile-des-Vannes (L’Ile-Saint-Denis), the territory was a place of experimentation, innovative projects, and buildings that marked their time. This was already what the book “Sports and architecture in Seine-Saint-Denis”, by Hélène Caroux, which focused on the contemporary period and the emergence of sports facilities of all kinds.

All this work makes it possible to sweep away the ready-made image of a department that is too often reduced to its large aging complexes, inherited from the Trente Glorieuses.

There remains a major challenge: to preserve the existing heritage, to have it recognized. For thirty years a departmental archeology mission has been working to inventory, study and enhance remarkable buildings. In a foreword, the president (PS) of the department, Stéphane Troussel, recalls that even today, the town of Dinan (11,000 inhabitants) in the Côtes-d’Armor “has almost as many historical monuments as the forty towns that make up Seine-Saint-Denis ”.